I have a layer which is a map of a town, and a shapefile which shows the boundaries within that town.

I wish to cut the layer up along each of the internal boundaries so that I end up with many layers, each containing the map of one small area as defined by shapefile. I know that I can use the clip tool to cut the map to the shape of the whole shape file, but I don't know how you use the boundaries contained within the shapefile to cut the map.

2 Answers
2

Since you mentioned that you have updated to an ArcInfo license, I would recommend looking into a script tool called Split Layer By Attributes from ESRI's Geoprocessing Model and Script Tool Gallery. The general workflow for this tool is as follows:

Use Union or Intersect to assign attributes from your boundaries
shapefile to your town shapefile.

Run Split Layer By Attributes to export individual shapefiles based
on an attribute field.